Customer Care
Customer care is treating your customers with respect and dignity. It requires curiosity and empathy on everyone’s part in a startup.
Customer Development
Listen to the Quiet Ones
While the more visible extroverts seem like a natural first choice to approach for feedback on your product, you can learn as much when you listen to the quiet ones.
Kristin Zhivago: The Promise Keeper
Kristin Zhivago’s “The Promise Keeper” outlined the need for business processes that support your brand as the promise that you keep.
Maintaining Your Professional Network
Some people are natural connectors. Sean Murphy is one of those. In this video, he shares one of his secret to network maintenance. He frames maintaining your professional network as counting your blessings. Your network is a long-term investment. It takes the time to nurture and grow your relationships.
Customer Discovery Framework
SKMurphy’s bootcamp provides a proven Customer Discovery Framework for validating your idea with prospects to determine the real market need.
Focus on Frequency and Severity
Successful entrepreneurs focus on the frequency and severity of customer problems. The primary reason why new technologies don’t get adopted is that the potential customer decides to continue living with the problem. Start the most serious
Etienne Garbugli on Opportunities: Finding New Products
Etienne Garbugli looks at finding product opportunities, and how entrepreneurs deliver value and gain a foothold inside businesses.
Just Sell the Results to Reduce Perception of Risk
Sean Murphy explains to a client why startups should just sell the results to reduce a prospect’s perception of risk in a new tool.
Sean Murphy Interview with Etienne Garbugli for the LeanB2B Podcast
Sean Murphy was interviewed by Etienne Garbugli on “Working Capital: It Takes More Than Money” for the March 9, 2021 LeanB2B Podcast.
Why is it so hard to get your first ten customers?
The key challenges to getting your first ten customers relate to understanding the customer buying process and managing the startup learning process for need, impact, customer definition and message.
A Holistic Approach to Launching a Bootstrapped Startup
We outline the process of launching a bootstrapped startup, from creating an idea, to forming a team, to proving viability.
40 Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews
This post on B2B customer development interviews builds on one of my most popular. If you would like help preparing for customer development interviews or reviewing results from recent interviews, contact us. Here are my lessons learned from taking part in interviews where the startup planned to offer a product or service to a business. …
A Self-Assessment: Are You Working on the Right Risks?
Take our self-assessment to verify that your team is working on the right risks. Identify the capabilities you need to develop next.
Q: What Makes a Product Attract Early Adopters?
The following is an edited version of a recent online conversation I had with a team of bootstrappers about how to make their product attract early adopters.
Lee Carter on the Value of Direct Observation
A Q&A with Lee Carter where we explore the value of direct observation of customer environments to complement customer interviews. Lee shares details of a project he worked on where direct observation provided a valuable complement to a basic product specification.
Qualitative Research: Problem Exploration for Lean Startups
Key points from Mary Sorber’s presentation on “Qualitative Research: Problem Exploration for Lean Startups” at Lean Culture July-31-2018.
David Telleen-Lawton on Customer Discovery Meetings at Lean Culture Tue-Jun-26-2018
David Telleen Lawton will offer a detailed briefing on the nuts and bolts of Customer Discovery Meetings from a sales perspective at Lean Culture on Tue-Jun-26-2018.
How To Scale Up Qualitative Research Efforts
Qualitative research that allows firms to understand unmet and emerging needs is now the bottleneck for the specification, development, and delivery of significant new products. This is the result of substantial investment in the last two decades in tools for software development, quantitative evaluative research, marketing and sales. This has fundamental implications for how product …
Entrepreneur as Detective
Exploration and discovery constitute significant activities for entrepreneurs. There are various metaphors–for example entrepreneur as researcher, entrepreneur as scientist, entrepreneur as journalist–this post uses entrepreneur as detective as a metaphor.
Don’t Explore Thoughtland In Interviews
Whether you are interviewing potential employees or potential customers, don’t explore Thoughtland with a focus on predictions and beliefs. Instead, explore actual behavior and prior experience.